Tag Archives: book launch

07.05.22
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Through the Lens Backwards

Today, Galesburg, Illinois, is unprepossessing. My old hometown has seen better days. As you drive through various residential neighborhoods, you see signs of urban decay. 

Still, there is a vitality. People are doing things. 

Main Street Underpass. Contractor photo.

New overpasses and underpasses have liberated Main Street traffic from its former bondage to the railroads’ freight-hauling schedules. 

The commercial section of Seminary Street was remodeled decades ago, its old brick pavement lovingly restored. Stores, restaurants, and a coffee shop line both sides of the street for a three-block stretch, south and north of Main. Establishments like the Landmark Café have been in business for a long time now and do a steady trade. Redevelopment of this old street is a retail success story.

Knox College looks prosperous. There are new buildings, and some of the old classics, such as Alumni Hall, have been rehabbed and repurposed beyond their former glory. The Knox Bowl football stadium is a big step up from the old field where we used to watch the hapless Siwashers struggle against the bruisers of Lawrence and St. Olaf. 

The very term “Siwashers,” once a proud and unique moniker, has been officially retired in favor of “Prairie Fire.” Ladies and gentlemen, applaud as the Knox Prairie Fire take the field. It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but we learned in 1993 that “Siwash”—which the college had used in all innocence for nearly a century—was also an ethnic slur against Native Americans, used especially in the Pacific Northwest. 

Victorian house, Buffalo, New York. Note the fishscale siding on the tall mansard roof. Photo by Andre Carrotflower, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0.

Another sign of the times: There is now a nice soccer pitch beside the Knox Bowl. Not quite as nice as the gridiron for American football. Still, it’s something.

The tony streets north of Main in the central part of the city—Broad, Cherry, Prairie, Kellogg, and Seminary—are still lined with very nice, well-kept houses. Some of them are gorgeous Queen Annes or other late Victorian castles. Here and there one of these old dowagers crumbles down towards her foundations—neither rehabbed nor yet plowed under. Such eyesores tend to bring the neighborhood down. But it’s still a nice neighborhood. Some of the streets are still made of brick and lined with old globe-style streetlamps. 

Charming it is, as in quaint.

That fin-de-siècle architecture, and the town’s disused streetcar tracks, prompted the late Jack Finney to pen a classic short story called “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime.” In case anyone under sixty is reading this, I ought to explain the story’s title was a sidelong allusion to a line from “I Love Paris,” a very popular song penned by Cole Porter in 1953.

Finney, a Milwaukee native, was a 1934 Knox college graduate. Most of his best work was what today we call speculative fiction—a mélange of sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism. The basic thrust of “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime” was a comforting conceit that the old red-brick and fishscale-sided town was possessed by a benevolent antiquarian spirit which actively subverted the schemes of developers to tear things down and modernize. 

You might not enjoy the story—if you can even find it. I, however, have long been captivated by Finney’s atavistic sensibility. 

James Daly in “A Stop at Willoughby.” CBS Television photo. Public Domain.

The late Rod Serling penned a favorite episode for the first season of The Twilight Zone called “A Stop at Willoughby.” In it, a harried, hounded, and henpecked New York ad exec looks out the window of his commuter train as he goes home in the evening and sees a little town called Willoughby—a town that’s never been on the train’s route before. 

In Willoughby, the sun always shines. A band plays in the park. Men and women in outdated garb stroll down streets traversed by horse-drawn rigs. Young boys roll hoops along board sidewalks. The ad man, portrayed by actor James Daly, longs for the slow-paced serenity of the little town. 

The story has a Serlingesque dark side in the harsh forces of modern life that impel the ad man to crave a life in Willoughby. I won’t reveal any spoilers, but my point is that the protagonist’s yearning to turn back the clock is pure Jack Finney. 

Maybe Jack was right. Maybe Galesburg harbors a stubborn, almost animate, resistance to change. Perhaps that’s why not everything has gone right for this grand old American city. 

But speaking as a native, I still love it—springtime, summer, or fall. 

Winter is another thing altogether.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

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(History is not what you thought!)

05.21.19
by

Birth of “Beneath the Flames”

This is a guest post by Gregory Lee Renz, author of  Beneath the Flames. 

Greg Renz

Storytelling is ingrained in the culture of the fire service. I was a firefighter for twenty-eight years, retiring as a fire captain. Invariably, after one of our more dramatic responses someone would say that someday they should write a book about all of this. Of course, very few ever did. So when I retired I decided I would. After all, over my twenty-eight years on the department, I had gained a deep well of experiences and colorful characters to write about, and I was an avid reader. So how hard could it be to write a book? I would soon learn. 

How to Become a Writer in Hundreds of Hard Lessons

At least I had the sense to enroll in a creative writing course with the University of Wisconsin Continuing Studies program. That’s when I realized I knew nothing of creative writing. I sucked. Thankfully, the patient instructors were able to inspire me to keep working at this extremely challenging craft. I had compelling stories to tell but did not have the tools to tell them. I kept working, and my writing improved to the point where I began to receive awards in contests. At the UW Writers’ Institute several years ago I was awarded first place in both fiction and nonfiction in their writing contest. This was the validation I needed to continue working on my novel BENEATH THE FLAMES. 

I realized I was a writer when I could not give up and walk away from the story. The vast majority of people who begin writing a novel will never finish it. It’s damn hard work. Some days are incredibly frustrating. But then some days fill me with such elation that I know I can never give up writing. There’s nothing like entering my fictional world and letting the story and characters come to me. The power of the creative mind is endless. I just have to give in to it.

Book Launch Coming Up

After ten years of creative writing courses, workshops, conferences, and writing group critiques, the dream is finally coming true. May 31 I will be launching my novel at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee at 7:00 p.m. It’s been a long road: endless revisions, rejections from literary agents, and self-doubt. Without the guidance of the patient instructors of The Continuing Studies Program and the energizing conferences and workshops, this would still be a dream. The best advice I can give other writers is to attend as many conferences and workshops as possible. I have made so many friends and contacts over the years who have inspired me to keep writing and are now supporting the publication of my novel. It is this network of writing friends who will keep you going through the tough times when you doubt yourself and your story. 

All in a Day’s Work

Now begins the other side of writing a book—the process of promotion and marketing. What an eye-opener this has been. Firefighters often say that we were just doing our job when we make a rescue or save a home. And we’re serious. If we happen to be in the right place at the right time, we do what we have to do. Sometimes that can be challenging and incredibly dangerous. But that isour job.

Now, as a writer, I’m supposed to go out and promote myself. I can’t say I was just doing my job as an author. Not too many people would be drawn to my novel if that’s how I pitched it. Now there are interviews, television appearances, newspaper interviews, and book signings. I have to admit this is quite fun and exciting, but what comes with this is the stress of coming off well and being entertaining with the talks.

So it’s been quite a journey and if you can’t walk away from your writing desk, chances are in your favor to succeed. Persistence, persistence, persistence.

If you want to know more about me and my novel please visit my website at https://glrenz.com. You can also preorder my novel there with free shipping until June 1.

Here’s a sample of the many advance reviews the book has received so far:

“Renz draws on his years of experience as a firefighter to bring a hardscrabble authenticity to his novel. He packs the tale with plenty of action and a lot of heart. His firefighting sequences are detailed and thrilling, placing readers right in front of the flames. His prose is clean and, at times, poetic.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Gregory Renz’s new novel is a triumph of poignancy, compassion, and restraint. In it, a man’s regret is transformed to triumph.”—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the bestselling novel, The Deep End of the Ocean
“BENEATH THE FLAMESis an action-packed debut novel with something for every reader: suspense, romance, friendship, forgiveness, family, and more.  A novel that like its protagonist, relentlessly presses on into fiery and controversial terrain where many other writers fear to tread.”—Nickolas Butler, author of The Hearts of Menand Little Faith

Gregory Lee Renz, retired fire captain and author, was inducted into the Fire and Police Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2008 Gregory traded his turnout gear for a writing desk to pursue his passion. Storytelling. He now lives in Lake Mills, Wisconsin with this wife Paula.